Ep. 975: The Secret to My Best Rut Hunt Ever

This week on the show I’m breaking down my 2025 rutcation to Iowa and sharing with you the decisions I made, the tactics I used, and the mindset I had that ultimately led to this being quite possibly my best rut hunt ever.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your guide to
the White Tail Woods presented by first Light, creating proven
versatile hunting apparel for the stand, saddle or blind. First
Light Go Farther, Stay Longer, and now your host, Mark Kenyon.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. This week on
the show, I'm breaking down my twenty twenty five Iowa
rut hunt and detailing for you the decisions I made,
the tactics I used, and the mindset I had that
ultimately led to me having what I believe white possibly
might be my very best rut hunt ever. All right,

(00:47):
welcome back to the Wired to Hunt podcast, brought to
you by First Light and their Camera for Conservation Initiative.
And today it's just you and me, another solo episode,
and I am doing a couple day after breakdown of
my twenty twenty five rut cation to Iowa. I've done
this before. I've broken down specific hunts, especially ones that

(01:11):
turned out well. They don't always turn out well, but
this one did. I've got a successful rut hunting deer
story for you today, and really an epic trip. As
I mentioned in the introduction, as I drove home from
this trip, a couple days ago, I thought to myself,
this is probably my most enjoyable rut hunt ever. This

(01:32):
was my best rut cation to date. And so what
I want to do today for you is explain to
you exactly why that was. Explain to you exactly how
this hunt came together, why it was so successful, and
maybe more importantly, why it was so enjoyable. So I'm
going to break down day by day where I sat,

(01:56):
why I sat there, how these things set up, what
were the tactics I ed use, what kinds of things
did I see, what didn't I see what worked, what
didn't work, and everything else that went on around it, Because,
as I just alluded to a second ago, what was
going on around this hunt maybe was just as important,
or possibly more important than what was actually going on
in the tree. And I'll explain that to you more

(02:19):
as we go along here. And you know, a lot
of what made this trip so successful, what I think
made this trip so special in many ways, can be
attributed back to some lessons that I learned from the
last time I hunted in Iowa. That was back in
twenty twenty one, and some of you might remember I
recorded a podcast the very day after that hunt ended,

(02:41):
in which I did something very similar to what I'm
doing here today. I just broke down the hunt, what
happened day by day, what I did, what my decisions were,
how it all went, and what I learned from it.
And that was a raw podcast. That was a podcast
that I was I was feeling it on that day,
after it had been a rough hunt. Things ended poorly.
A bunch of stuff happened throughout the week but ultimately

(03:04):
didn't fill my tag, and that next day I was
driving to another trip I recorded this podcast, and after
that I realized that there was something wrong with my
hunting life. There was something missing or something I guess

(03:26):
it's still hard to put words to it exactly, but
my why maybe had gotten off course and I had
lost the fun in my hunting. And eventually, over the
next year or two, if you've listened to if you
listen to the podcast back then, you heard me kind
of trying to work through that and trying to make
sense of my hunting journey and where I was and

(03:46):
why I was doing what I was doing and how
I was doing things. And what I ultimately realized was
that I had lost the fun in deer hunting because
I was so obsessed with success, conventional views of success.
I was so obsessed with killed the big buck. I
was so obsessed with being a good deer hunter, and
all of that led to me missing out on all

(04:08):
the other good things around hunting that make it so special.
An appreciation for the beautiful scenery, spending time with your
family out there, prioritizing trips with your friends, participating in
the fun camaraderie stuff that goes on around to hunt,
going for a track job with a buddy during the
middle of the day, or going out to lunch or
breakfast after the morning hunt, or hanging out with friends afterwards,

(04:31):
or whatever it is. I was so single mindedly focused
on doing everything I could to kill that big, giant
buck that everything else was pushed off to the side.
And that was really epitomized by that Iowa trip. So
what I want to do for you to set the
stage for today's conversation is I want to give you
a chance to listen to me back then four years ago,

(04:53):
twenty twenty one, Mark Kenyon, just after my last Iowa hunt.
I want you to hear how I was feeling at
the end of that trip and I think that will
provide a very interesting contrast to what you're about to
hear from twenty twenty five Mark Kenyon. So here's that
excerpt from the end of my podcast breaking down my

(05:14):
twenty twenty one Iowa hunt. I'm honestly, I'll go back
and say I'm embarrassed, like I'll tell you, like just honestly,
just being brutally honest with you. This is embarrassing. It's
embarrassing that I missed a buck. It's embarrassing that I
didn't kill a deer. It's embarrassing I spent seven days

(05:34):
in the best place in the world and couldn't get
it done. It's embarrassing that, you know, me, Clay, Tony,
and Spencer were all on this hunt for the show,
and Tony killed, Spencer killed, Clay killed. Who's the one
guy that didn't kill the son of a gun that
hosts the Wired Dunt bog Gas this great big whitetail podcast.
I'm supposed to be the guy that's supposed to get
this done and then I don't. So all of those

(05:58):
things have been in my brain and man, it sucks.
But the one thing when I climbed out of the tree,
last night. I just said, I freaking gave it my all.
I mean, I just did everything I could. I did

(06:21):
not take a break. I did not take an easy
route every time I thought, man, I gotta make an adjustment,
every time I thought, I gotta take a long way,
every time I thought I gotta go harder, longer. Whatever
I did it, I give every damn little bit of myself.
And I am whooped and tired, and you know, that's

(06:45):
just how it goes sometimes. So I am going to
try to sleep easy tonight in some kind of way,
knowing that I left it on the court, left it
all on the field, and that that is just how
it goes sometimes. That's right, that's life, all right. So
as you heard there, I was down the dumps. I

(07:06):
was frustrated. I was upset, and much of it was
because I was upset with myself for my performance in
the field, how I actually executed in the moment, whether
or not I killed a big buck, and if I
had success right. But as I alluded to a couple
minutes ago, the more I thought about it, the more
I realized that my discontent with the hunt actually had

(07:31):
a whole lot to do with all the other things
going on, because during that hunt, you just know, I
had a bunch of other buddies down there hunting the
same area. I had two local friends who lived in
the area who were hunting. My good buddy Josh was
in town hunting as well, and some other local friends
were there too. So everybody was enjoying their Iowa trip.

(07:52):
They were going out and having a good time in
the evenings, meeting up, having dinner, stuff like that. They
were getting together for a late breakfast or lunch in
the middle of the day. They were sometimes hunting together.
You know, they've got some ground blind set up in
some spots that multiple multiple people can hunt together and
have a good time. They were doing all those things,
and I was not allowing myself to because I thought,

(08:14):
you know, a really good di y deer hunter isn't
gonna sit some ground blind that his friends set up
for him. No, he's gonna do it all himself. He's
gonna hunt from his saddle, and he's gonna show the
world that he's a great deer hunter himself. I wasn't
going out for lunch with all the friends, because a
really good deer hunter should hunt every single possible minute
and should never take a break and should do everything

(08:35):
he can to possibly, you know, kill that big deer.
So I'm gonna hunt from dawn till dusk and no sacrifice,
no time off, got to be out there. And there's
just all these different examples of stuff like that. I
refuse to enjoy the hunt because I had to kill
a big deer, and then ultimately my friends had a
great time. I had a miserable experience. They all ended

(08:59):
up killing deer and I didn't. And I started to
think that maybe there's a connection there too. Not only
was I making myself miserable, but maybe because I was miserable,
I wasn't hunting as successfully as well. So all of
these things, as I mentioned, led to some changes in
my hunting style, led to some changes to how I'm
prioritizing my hunts and my decisions, and ultimately led me
to decide that when I ever returned to Iowa for

(09:21):
another hunt, I was going to do things differently. And
that's the trip that just wrapped up. So let's get
into this trip. To kick things off, I did a
scouting and shed hunting trip in the spring this year
to this region of Iowa. I was going back to
hunt in the same region where I had in the past,

(09:42):
where my good buddies have some land and live close by,
and wanted to spend time there in the preseason to
enjoy the whole scope of things. So for the first
time ever, I actually invited my family to come out
and join me for one of these trips. I had
my wife and my two boys come out or a
spring shed hunting trip. Got to go there with my
buddies and their families. Got to, you know, just have

(10:04):
a good time out there, got to walk, got to,
you know, show the kids some antlers. They got to
find some antlers, be a part of the process. See
these places where I was gonna hunt. Just had fun
and we ended up finding some antlers, and I got
to learn a couple of these properties a little bit
more too. Now the two spots I was going to
hunt this year would be one new spot one spot

(10:24):
that I hunted last time around. Both of these properties
are spots either owned or leased by my friends. A
major major element to this year's hunt is the incredible
generosity of my buddies, two friends in particular, who have
just been so kind and generous with providing, you know,

(10:45):
me somewhere to stay, providing somewhere for me to hunt,
having spots you know, well set up, well managed, well
taken care of that. They have been you know, very
open and generous with myself and some of our other
buddies and letting us share these properties with them. So huge, huge,
huge thank you to my pales Ross and Peter for

(11:06):
being great friends over so many years and now being
so generous with their hunting spots. They've got these incredible
spots here in Iowa that they've shared with myself and
several of our other friends, and we've all had so
much fun because of that. This week being a terrific
example of that. So we did the group shed hunt,
came back on this summer, did some work on these properties,

(11:28):
helping out, hanging some stands, doing some scouting, doing some
velvet footage, putting up trail cameras the whole nine yards. Again,
just a really great excuse to get together with my
best hunting buddies and see some deer, get amped up
for the hunting season, establish what deer might be in
the area. Want some really good deer near my buddy
Peter's property that I was excited to hunt got some

(11:50):
really great velvet footage that some of you might have
seen on Instagram. But coming into the fall, we then
started looking at trail camera pictures and again, and this
is like a fun group activity because we're all kind
of hunting together. We're sharing all of our cell cam
pictures and texting each other when different bucks show up
and talk about how old do you think this one is,

(12:10):
or what do you think about this deer? Or have
you seen this deer in the past, and going back
and forth and just having fun with it, not obsessing over,
you know, we have to kill this one deer, but
just enjoying it and just getting excited about it. Ultimately,
a couple of weeks before I was going to go
to hunt, we decided we we're having a hard time
keeping track of what deer was what. So I went
and spent a couple hours one night finding each different

(12:33):
individual buck on all of their properties and building like
a Google image or like a Google folder for each one.
This is my inner nerd coming out, So we basically
had a folder that had pictures of each buck so
we could then say, okay, yeah, yeah, this buck is
the one with a funky G four that curls in
and here's four different pictures of him, and this way

(12:54):
we kind of were able to make sense of each
individual deer. And then we decided, yeah, we're going to
put names on these deer, so we know how to,
you know, talk about them, but we're gonna do it
in kind of a stupid way and in a long,
roundabout way. We ended up deciding to theme all the
names of the deer this year around types of bread.
So really dumb, but ended up being very funny because

(13:17):
now we've got deer like sour dough, pumper nickel, french bagette, hamburger, bun, pancake,
Kirkland signature, just a bunch of ridiculous names that every
time you say them you laugh to yourself about how
dumb it is. And that ended up making the whole
thing pretty funny too. So we've got this whole list
of deer that have been showing up on these properties.

(13:38):
They're named after types of bread. I think that very
well sets the theme for the trip because there was
a lot of ridiculousness. It was a lot of fun
and a lot of laughs, and it seemed appropriate that
when we talk about any one of these bucks, we
don't take ourselves too seriously and doing it because we're
referencing Ah Man, We're gonna go in there and try
to hunt hamburger bun. So that was how the hunt began.

(14:01):
Day one. I drove up on Halloween and was going
to be staying at my buddy's place. He's got a
house out there on one of these properties that he
shares with all of our hunting buddies, so we can
all camp out there, hang out, have fun in the evening,
and have somewhere to sleep. So got to the clubhouse.
Ross was gonna hunt with me on day one. We
were going to go in for a hunt in one

(14:22):
of these ground blinds that he had set up that,
you know, four years ago I would have said, no,
I can't do that. That seems, you know, not DII
enough or something. But this hunt, this time, the goal
was to just enjoy the whole experience, and that's something
I probably should have set up at the beginning. My
plan here, my goal here for this hunt was not

(14:42):
that I had to kill some big giant buck, not
that I had to prove myself and hunting any particular way.
My goal was simply to enjoy the Iowa experience to
its fullest. And what does that mean? That meant number one,
having a really good time with my good buddies. Number two,
that meant letting myself enjoy the week without the pressure
and expectations of having to kill a giant buck. I

(15:05):
did not go into this having some kind of arbitrary
well it's got to be this big kind of thing.
I did not go into this believing, well, I got
to kill this one deer. It was just let's go there,
let's see Iowa at its best. Right when you go
to Iowa, you want to be able to see some
mature bucks. You want to see some running activity, you
want to see some fun stuff that maybe you're not
normally gonna see, you know back home in Michigan, where

(15:26):
there's not as many mature bucks. So I wanted to
not rush things. I wanted to see the show and
do the fun, dumb stuff that all my buddies get
to do. But I would never let myself so hunt
the groundblines, hunt the box blinds, go in for lunch,
do some drives looking for deer, do all the fun
stuff that's not just sitting in a tree and making
myself miserable. So that was the goal. We started out

(15:48):
with this first night hunt in this really nice little
corn food plot, tucked into the timber. They're standing corn
corn behind us. There's some knockdown corn in front of us.
Our ground blind tucked into that corn, just a dynamite
setup and sat there that night just having a blast.
Me and Ross were telling stories, laughing probably too loud.

(16:10):
Ended up seeing a bunch of deer come in towards
that last hour of daylight, including a really nice three
year old buck, that buck that we called Kirkland after
the Costco bread and super nice three year old deer
I think a nine pointer with a little sticker off
his G two on one side, and got to just
watch that deer out in front. That was one deer
that we'd agreed like, hey, he's a young one, he'll

(16:31):
be great some other year. I would love for that
deer to be around for Ross and other people to
hunt in the future. So that was a deer I
wasn't going to go after, and I was perfectly fine
with that. So we got to watch Kirkland feeding around
in front of us and kind of nose around some
does The setup here was the wind was in our
face blowing back into that standing corn. There's betting to

(16:52):
our west. So what we imagine happening was that there
would be bucks and does on these ridge points, and
the would come off of these points feed into that cornfield,
and hopefully some of these bucks would cruise through checking
the does, and that's basically what happened. We saw a
handful of young bucks that really nice three year old
and that was the night. A day two we decided

(17:15):
to go back in and actually hunt that same spot
one more time because it had actually been blowing up
on trail camera. The big mature bucks had been hitting
this corn plot in the mornings, especially actually coming back
in late morning and checking for doughs and hitting this
scrape tree that was out there, and so we thought, well,
let's give it one morning hunt. It's a small corn
plot that the part that was actually knocked down was

(17:37):
probably you know, quarter acre maybe, so it's not like
a destination food source. There were some big cornfields way
to the north quarter mile up there maybe, so in
this particular location, it's usually a late morning thing because
they're slowly transitioning back from those big fields. So the
idea was, let's get in there early before those deer

(17:57):
get back. Let's get set up in this groundb line.
Hopefully the trickle back in as they head to bed,
and then you get those bucks doing the same because
this is a secluded food plot. This is not like
a wide open, open food source. This is a back
in the cover, a little Heidi hoole spot. So I
end up doing that and see a decent handful of
deer and some young bucks again but not the big guys,

(18:18):
but just a very fun hunt. And this is something
that came up over and over again on this trip
and something different than a lot of my hunts, just
because the priority on this trip and for you know
a lot of my friends when we do these group
hunts out there has been enjoying each other's company. The
you know, sometimes the priority isn't on everybody hunting in

(18:40):
their own spots so that everybody can kill a big deer. Sometimes,
like in this case, my buddy Ross was sacrificing one
of his own hunts to instead sit with me, just
to enjoy it with me and you know, get to
share some stories and get to see the deer together
and maybe he could you know, get to be there
watch me kill a deer, all that kind of stuff.
So that made for a really fun hunt and it

(19:01):
was something that we ended up doing later that day.
We came in at midday, had coffee, had lunch. My friend,
another friend from Michigan, Dustin, actually drove all the way
out from Michigan. Speaking of sacrificing hunting time, he came
out to camp even without an Iowa tag. He drove
all the way from Michigan to come out and spend
three four days with us, just to be there for

(19:21):
the deer camp, just to be there to tag along
for a few hunts and have some fun and see
the show. So Dustin and I went and hunted on
another one of these properties. We hunted another blind overlooking
a really cool kind of a larger interior food source,
surrounded by again these like high fields with big ridges
all around them that dropped down to some thick, nasty bottoms.

(19:44):
So the deer, I'll bet around these outside points. The
does come from those bottoms up into feet into the
upper fields. You've got bucks that are then cruising the
edges of these ridges, and then the evenings they pop
up and check those fields for doughs. So the evening
was hunting one of these blinds overlooking this other interior
food source, and at this point, day two, I'm just

(20:07):
gonna kind of want to get a lay of the land,
see what stuff looks like, and also just get a
sense of what's happening. So some observation type sits was
what I was trying to do with these, And this
one in particular was exciting because even though on this
property Pete's property, there weren't a whole lot of mature
bucks showing up anymore on camera the last month or so,

(20:27):
the standing corn was getting combined right then, so when
the corn comes out oftentimes that shakes things up. You
start to see new deer, or the deer that are
there are more visible in daylight because they're forced to

(20:49):
be in the timber or in the open now. So
we hunted this blind. Actually put my Dave smith Buck
decoy out in front of me just in case we
could get something in sight and rattle or call him in,
and me and Dustin just had a great time again
telling stories, watching things, catching up on life. Ultimately, we
saw two of the better bucks on this property, but

(21:12):
both of them were like three maybe four at the
oldest and none of them came in range, but very
fun hunt saw a bunch of deer. There was some chasing,
There was actually some rattling success. I rattled and one
of those nice bucks when we called sourdough, and then
another younger buck actually came running in as I was rattling,
but they stopped at about one hundred and fifty yards out.

(21:34):
They ran for maybe three hundred got to like one
hundred hundred and fifty and then just kind of moved off,
cruising in two different directions. Fun hunt no success that day.
Dig three. Now we're getting into the point where I'm
starting to get a little bit more serious. Those early
hunts were low impact, observation type sits. I really didn't

(21:54):
want to force things too early. Like I said, I
wanted to enjoy the Iowa show. It would be a
little bit disappointing probably to show up and kill on
the very first day and be done. So I didn't
mind that I was kind of hunting this outside in
kind of way. But day three, decide, Okay, it's time
to get a little bit more serious and punge in there.

(22:16):
And so I moved into one of the better spots
on that first property. This is a really cool location
that uses terrain to funnel deer in and around a
bunch of dough betting. So you're you're layering, like the
two core principles of hunting, the rut into one spot.
So if you can imagine this is an area with

(22:36):
with a bunch of different ridges and points all extending
down to the spottom, so it's like a ridge. And
then imagine almost like three big ridges, like an E
pointing down into the bottom right and at the top
of that E. If you imagine, like I guess, it's
more like an M because the m's pointing down right
at the top middle of that M. All three of

(22:57):
those points kind of come together in this spot, and
I was sitting in that spot. There's a little bit
of a saddle. Three of these points all kind of
come together up at the top here. And in addition
to that, my buddy who had owns this property had
cut some paths through all the thick stuff too. So
there's a mode trail down one of the points. There's

(23:17):
a mode trail that leads to another point, and there's
a mode trail that cuts down into a ditch where
there's a crossing leading over to the other point, and
then at the hub of this wheel in the middle
of this he has a scrape tree that, as I
showed up and saw, was just pounded by deer with
bucks making scrapes there. So really a dynamite set and

(23:39):
a location that you know, you could see deer cruising
through and visiting at any point in the day. And
then off one of those points within sight, not the
one I'm sitting on the top of that m, is
where that corn plot was that I hunted on day one,
so I could see some of that from where I
was at. So I can see to this little heidihole
food plot, I can see down to the bottom of

(23:59):
the down at the bottom where you know, that's like
this low area where it's really hard to hunt because
of swirling winds, But that's like where a whole lot
of travel converges too, So I could see down there
and call to anything. But up high on the m
at the top of that hub, I can have that
safe wind and still take advantage of a lot of that.
So I get in there early in the morning. Just

(24:20):
as I'm almost done getting set up, I hear and
a buck comes walking right in underneath me to that
scrape tree. I had taken my bino harness off because
I was putting on my main jacket and doing that,
I hung the binos up off to my side. So
that buck walked in when I didn't have access to
my binoculars, but just with bare eyes and it was

(24:42):
dark still, I could just see this huge frame and
he just destroyed that scrape tree, and I could smell him.
You could smell the rut musk stink on this deer,
so that was an exciting start. Had a second buck
coming behind him. This one was maybe like one hundred
hundred and ten inch buck, and he looked dinky compared
to that first one, so knew there was a good

(25:03):
one in the area. Knew that, you know, the two
best bucks on this particular property were in the zone.
They had been showing up on camera a lot in
recent days. The buck that had been at that corn
plot most often the last week was this deer we
called Hamburger Bun, and he's just a giant ten pointer

(25:23):
with a split brow tye and a big hook kind
of flyer off off his I guess it'd be his
right side looked like one hundred and sixty class buck,
big bodied, and I got to think, and that might
have been the deer that came in before daylight, just
based on the way the frame looked. So I was
excited as it became daylight and right away just buck

(25:46):
after buck cruising through, and it seemed like I was
on the X. Like almost every buck that came through
would cruise up one of these points and go through
that hub of the wheel right in front of me,
or a couple times just for fun, like I saw
a two year old or a three year old buck,
I would do a little grunt and they would come
and that would suck them in right to there. So
I felt like unbelievably confident in the spot. I think

(26:07):
I saw six or seven different bucks that morning, maybe
two year olds, three year olds, year and a half olds.
Just an awesome Iowa morning, the kind of morning you
dream of. Cold crisp, a lot of deer moving, a
lot of deer in range. Got to watch a bunch
of NICs. Like I said, young bucks just ripping up

(26:27):
that scrape fifteen yards in front of me. Very enjoyable.
I came in. I hunted till I guess twelve thirty
or so on that day, and again this is where
I think what I tried to do on this trip
differently than other years was that I tried to balance
hunting hard still and putting in the time and being
out there, but at the same time still trying to

(26:49):
enjoy yourself and be a part of the camaraderie side
of things. So I told myself I wasn't gonna hunt
every day all day. I was gonna take some days,
coming at midday and enjoy the thing whateverbody else. So
on this particular day, hunt until twelve thirty snuck in.
It was a spot where I had the right access
to be able to exit without spooking anything. So I thought, Okay,
this is a perfect time where I can slip out

(27:11):
the back door. Nothing will know I'm gone, nothing will
know I'm coming and going. Went back to the clubhouse,
had coffee and lunch with the guys, had a good laugh,
enjoyed ourselves for an hour and a half, and then
I grabbed my gear, snuck back in, was back out
there by two thirty or so. Get back in that
same tree. I all just get everything all set up

(27:32):
and then look way down there in the bottom of
this creek, bottom down there, and I see something moving around.
Pull up my bi and I see a dough, see
another dough, and then I see antlers. Pretty quickly, I
see it's a big buck, and then I realized it's
Hamburger Bun, the number one deer, and he's back there
bumping around this dough. I watched him for a while

(27:53):
and she eventually takes him up off the other side,
up the ridge, on the opposite of my kind of
ridge top. I'm on and off out of sight. Very
exciting though, to see the number one buck, the big
guy with a dough in the area. The afternoon progresses
and other young bucks are bumping around down there, and

(28:13):
then I see another set of big anilers pulp my
bios zoom in there. Assume it's the same buck, but
it's actually the number two deer. It's the other really
big deer in the area. And this is a deer
that did not have a brand name at first. This
deer originally was called nutkicker because my buddy originally said
this was a deer that they thought we should not shoot.

(28:37):
And so the joke was that, you know, if you
shoot this buck, it's a nut kicker. So at first
he was calling it that deer. But by the time
this got around, my buddy got to the point where, actually,
and hey, we're supposed to be having fun. Kind of
back to my same thing. My own journey is a
journey that I think my buddy who owns this property
has been going through himself in many ways to not

(29:01):
be so stressed out about big deer, not be so
stressed about whether or not you kill the big one,
but instead sharing the good times of the people, enjoying
the process, enjoying these friendships that form around hunting. And
so in doing that, you know, he has made the
incredibly generous choice to share this property with myself and

(29:23):
some of the of our other friends. And also you
know realize like, hey, every deer doesn't have to get
five or six, Like it's okay if we shoot a
really good four year old or something like that. And
so this deer ended up being one of those deer
that was like, maybe he needs another year. But at
the same time, gosh, he's a giant. This would be
an incredible deer for one of these guys to shoot.
Go ahead, shoot him. So the name was changed to

(29:45):
Nutbread Sticking with our bread. The very ridiculous. I realized that.
So Nutbread is down there following a dough, and I'm
texting with my friend and just confirmeding, like, are you
sure this is the deer? You want me to shootes again?
I shoot him, shoot himbsolutely. So I ca to him
as he's coming up, let me take it back. He's
following this dough up the hill. Then the dough breaks

(30:06):
off of him and he does not follow the dough
for some reason. Now he's on his own, kind of
angling in my general direction, but looks like he's going
to move off down this point in the other direction.
So I give him a grunt and that turns him
and he starts coming my way. This is like a
one hundred and fifty something to one hundred and sixty type, big, huge,
clean typical, but taller and tighter than the other one.

(30:30):
And this dear kind of follows the opposite ridge from
me all the way up from like two hundred and
fifty yards away all the way to seventy yards gets
to this point where this ditch crossing is that all
these other bucks had dropped down and come up right
to my hub. I watched probably three or four other

(30:50):
bucks do this thing. They get to this very same
point where Nutbred is, then they drop down the ditch
and cross and end up at the scrape tree right
in front of me. So I've got everything righty. I'm
holding my bow. He's at seventy yards and walking down
to that ditch crossing like he's gonna just pop up
right to me. And it's this mode trail. Once you
drop him to the ditch, it's like a mode path
that like delivers deer right to you. It's it's a

(31:13):
dynamite set up. But as he starts to drop, he
hears something behind him, turns around and there's a dough
above him, and that spins him. He goes up there,
chases the dough and he's out of my life. But
incredible evening having seen both of those bucks, both the
two biggest bucks in this property, both of them, you know,

(31:33):
incredible to see in person, and one of them came
pretty darn close. So great day, great setup. This this
terrific terrain funnel that's also surrounded by dough betting and
dough feeding just within sight too, So kind of the
dream rut scenario. So the next day, I said, I'm
going right back in there. Day four, I'm hunting this

(31:54):
location again, and if it's good again, I probably should
just stay the whole day. So I slipped the under
the next day, it's a slower start, but around nine
something nine thirty or so, I see what looks like
a deer running straight down into the bottom ahead of
me from the opposite side. So I just had a
quick glimpse of what looked like a deer, maybe a buck,

(32:15):
sprinting down into the bottom. I pull up my bios,
can't see anything, so I say to myself, well, I
was thinking about maybe doing some rattling in the late morning.
This is as good a time as any. Let's rattle
and see if whatever ran down there will come up
my way. So I grabbed my antlers, turn around to
rattle away from the direction of where I saw those deer,

(32:35):
because I don't want them to see the flash of
the antlers. I'm rattling. And as I'm rattling, I look
back over my shoulder down towards the bottom, and I
see a deer running like charging up at me out
of the bottom, and it's a huge framed buck, and
I realize it's Hamburger bun. The number one deer is
charging up out of the bottom, and so you know,

(32:56):
in that moment you kind of freak out. You trying
to hang up the antlers, trying to grab your bow,
trying to turned around, just pure amazing white tail chaos.
He charges up from three hundred yards down at the bottom,
all the way up the opposite ridge, exactly in the
same path that Nutbread took the day before, and he
gets all the way to seventy yards right to that
same ditch crossing, and then stops and stares over at

(33:17):
my ridge and just just looks like a monster, and
he's looking for the fight. And he just sits there
and stares and looks and looks and looks and looks,
and then finally he didn't see the other bucks, and
so he turned around start walking away. I tried to
give him a call or two, but he wasn't having it.
He just started trotting back the way he was going.
So he runs back down the hill, runs up my point,

(33:40):
and then does like a big circle and circles downwind
of me, eventually going out site. But I was a
little worried in the back of my mind, like, oh crap,
he probably circled down wind of me, out of sight,
maybe winded me, probably winded me. Maybe that's the end
of the day, Like maybe that's the end of this
buck encounter. He's gonna catch on to me and be
out of here. So super exciting encounter, but sort of

(34:02):
disappointing that, you know, it didn't ultimately come together on
the good news though, is that we ended up getting
a trail camera picture of him like six hours later
in daylight on that property. Still, so I was like,
all right, he's still around, he didn't spook. Game is
still on. That night goes on, I do the all
day sit see some more deer, but but no more

(34:24):
big deer. That's day four, great encounter. Day five wind switch.
Can't hunt this area that I've been hunting the first
handful of days. Now we've got easterly winds. We've got
to go to a brand new place. I'm gonna still
hunt the same property because we very quickly kind of
found that this particular property where hamburger bun was where

(34:47):
way more mature deer. We're hanging out the other property
where sour dough or pancake, where those deer were there
was you know, those deer were like three year olds
and we really were not getting any of the older
so we had got on camera in the summer still
around it all. My buddy Pete, who had been hunting
there had not been seeing anything mature, but on this

(35:08):
other property it seemed to be really lights out, so
that's where we focused. So day four no sorry, day
five with a southeasterly wind, we had to relocate to
a different side of the farm. And this is another
really good setup. It's another one of those like ideal
rut locations that's worth discussing I think in some detail
here because it's something that if you can replicate like

(35:30):
it will work. This is the kind of spot that
absolutely will work if you have bucks in the area
that you want to get a crack at. This kind
of setup is perfect. So if you can imagine this
property has like two big blocks of cover. You've got
imagine like one big bowl like a big circle, and
then another big like rectangle of cover underneath it, and

(35:53):
separating these two is like a big crp field that
pushes in. So this big grassy field goes in between.
So you've got this big bowl on top and you've
got this big rectangle cover beneath it, and the cerp
field pushes and separates the two right in the middle,
except at the very end of it that timber there's
a small sea of timber that connects the two. So

(36:13):
imagine a big circle at the top, a sea of
timber that then the letters I mean, like the letter C,
that curves down and then connects this big rectangle cover
at the end. So that creates a pinch point in
the end, and that letter C of timber is created
by this point, this topographic feature that has big bluffs,
and so you've got this high point that then drops

(36:35):
off to a low valley beneath it where a creek
bottom is. So where we were set up was at
the head of that pinch, right by that big bowl.
So there's a big circle which is basically timber that
then gets low on the bottom and on the edges
of that is dough betting all around it, and then
the pinch right there leading to the bottom. So we

(36:57):
were sitting at that pinch next to do all this
dough betting that connects to a bunch of dough betting
at the other side of the funnel, and then our
wind blew off that bluff out over the creek bottom
behind us, so the wind was perfect, nothing could smell us.
We were in between we were in a funnel in
between two betting areas, and then we were also right
next to a set of dough betting areas and could

(37:18):
see more dough betting around us to call to. So
it's got everything you could possibly ask for for a
rut sit. It ended up being a kind of slow morning,
if I recall, that then led to kind of the
affirming information we needed in the late morning. So very
slow early. But then late morning we saw a handful

(37:39):
of younger bucks and then a pile of doughs. I
can't remember exactly how many, but maybe nine or ten
different doughs, and five or six of them ended up
betting like right around us, you know, within sight of us.
And so what that told me was that, hey, maybe
this doesn't work out right now this morning, but eventually
a good deer has to come through. Her bucks will
cruise through here because they are forced to buy this

(38:01):
terrain and buy this cover. This is the connecting point
to get between these two big dough hot spots. And
our wind is bulletproof, so if you spend enough time
here good things will happen. That's what I kept telling myself.
We sat there till midday, did not see a mature buck,
but saw the doughs that we needed. Some young bucks

(38:22):
actually pushed out most of those doughs. We didn't have
to spook them getting out of there. We left midday,
went and got lunch. One of the other guys in
our camp had shot a buck, so we got to
go check that out and have some good times just
helping with you hanging the deer up, weighing the deer,
standing around gawking at it, telling stories, all that kind
of good stuff. So that was another fun thing that

(38:44):
was going on. But it is day five, so you
got to make sure you're still taking advantage of your
hunting time. So we ended up going to a new
location for the evening because again the southeast wind was
tough for the original best spots. So here's another situation
where there is a ground blind that's set up next

(39:06):
to a sanctuary of sorts that doesn't get hunted, that
has tons of bucks historically, and it's a spot that
my buddies have access to a neighboring property. It's just
a field, but they've set up a ground blind on
the edge of this, and then when you put a
buck decoy out in that field, sometimes you can pull
bucks off of the neighboring property out into your field

(39:27):
and get a shot out. This is a spot that
I had the opportunity to hunt last time, and I
said no to it because again, it wasn't like up
to my hunt, my imagined hunt quality standards or whatever
it was. So I didn't go. And instead some of
my other friends went and they had a grand old time.

(39:47):
One of my buddies shot a great buck and had
all sorts of fun. So this time around was like, dang,
I wanna hunt the blind. Who cares? It's a good
time and we you know, usually multiple people will go
hunt and you just kind of shoot the bowl the
whole time, and it's a very fun place because you
can see a lot of deer and then you maybe
get bucks out there in the field to come to
your decoy, so you get to watch all that. So

(40:09):
you know, dang it, I'm gonna experience that finally this year.
So we did it, got out there, two of my
buddies sat with me. Again, this is not your typical
hardcore DIY saddle hunter kind of set up. This is

(40:32):
instead three goobers sitting in a box blind, laughing and
telling stories for much of the day. But at the
same time we saw a bunch of deer, got to
see some cool interactions with the decoy, and just had
a really good time. Ultimately we saw a couple of
nice three year olds, but nothing that we were gonna shoot.
Nothing came close enough that we wanted to shoot. And
so that was the end of day five. Day six,

(40:55):
new wind, north wind. I decided to go back to
that first property Hamburger, Bond and nut Bread were and
again hunt terrain. But with a north wind, I couldn't
hunt that hub of the m as I described it earlier.
I had instead go to the bottom ridge of the
m where you could blow your wind off that ridge
over another one of these big creek bottoms got down there.

(41:19):
This is deep in the property. This is hard to
get to. I had to get in there very early
in the morning, and I was gonna have to stay
there all day, very windy day. I don't know if
you remember. This would been like November fifth or sixth
or somewhere in that ballpark, and it was like twenty
thirty mile an hour winds. So I was blowing in
that tree all day. It was kind of a tough
long sit. Didn't see a whole lot. Saw a young

(41:42):
buck come in early, and then a couple doze, and
then two forty five. I look over my right shoulder.
The one place that my wind will get me in trouble,
like this spot's bulletproof, right in the edge of this
bluff blowing out over the back behind you. But the
wind cuts just a little bit where some deer could
travel on the edge of this bluff, and that, of course,

(42:04):
is where this deer comes from. I see feet, I
see legs approaching me through a pine tree. Pull up
my binoculars and I can see big antlers and this
is one of the shooters, a deer we called pumper nickel,
and pumper Nickel stops at like thirty yards and it's
just like staring at me. And I drop a milk
weed and see that the milkweed is going right to him.

(42:24):
So I realized, like I'm busted. He's smelling me right now.
I sat here all day long, and then the one
time you see a buck, of course, he has to
come to the one like five degree area where I'm
vulnerable from a win position, and he does. He wins me,
he spins around. He doesn't like spook spook, but he
does turn and just kind of like trots away. And
that was the day. That was day six. It was

(42:48):
one maybe point in the trip where I was starting
to feel like, uh oh, this is not this is
not going my way, and we're running out of time.
And was trying to stick to that positive message that
I've been sharing with you here today, like just have
fun with it, see what happens. But I will tell
you that this point I was getting a little bit nervous.

(43:12):
I guess a little background for you. I hunted Iowa
in twenty twelve and killed a buck, but when I
went and returned in twenty fifteen, I missed a giant
like a one hundred and sixty five inch buck. Missed
a buck in twenty fifteen. Then I came back in
twenty twenty one in the trip that I've been telling
you about last time around, and that's I missed a

(43:33):
giant eight pointer on the last day of that hunt.
So it's twenty twenty five. Now it has been thirteen
years since I filled the tag in Iowa. And my
buddies have been giving me a hard time about it.
The joke has been that I'm the buckless non resident.
I'm the only guy who I'm the only non resident
who can't kill buck in Iowa, apparently. And so now

(43:53):
it's day six again things don't go my way, and
I'm starting to feel like I might be the buckless
non resident forever. So there's a lot of joking and
laughing about that. And you know, I should point out
that every one of these nights, everyone comes back to
the clubhouse, and so there's like the group of us

(44:14):
that are hunting, and then there's some other local friends
in the area that all come to get together, and
so just a lot of fun and camaraderie and giving
each other a hard time and telling stories. So that's
all going on, while I'm also, you know, slowly getting
a little bit more nervous that, geez, is this going
to be a whole bunch of close but not close
enough hunts again? Which leads to day seven. And day

(44:37):
seven we have that southeast wind again, and so with
the southeast wind, this is when we hunted that just
picture perfect rout setup that blows your wind off over
top of the creek at the sea, the sea pinch
point I was telling you guys about, that's the set
that would work really well for the southeast wind. So
this is a situation where we said, like, we have
to just trust that even though we didn't seen an

(44:59):
good bucks last time, even though it seems like, you know,
the southern part of the Farmers where we've seen everything,
we gotta trust that this place, if you spend enough
time here, it's gonna work out because it is a
pinch point between two amazing dough betting areas. You're right
next to one of those amazing dough betting areas and
your wind blows off into never never Land, so nothing's
gonna bust you. It is so good when the wind's right.

(45:22):
Spend time there, good things will happen. That's what I
kept telling myself over and over again. So now we
had that southeast wind, my buddy Ross is gonna hunt
with me. He's going to take a day off from
hunting and sit with me again because this is just
seems like a good spot, great time. Let's have some
fun together. Let's get out there and sit in the tree.
So we slip in there before daylight gets set up,

(45:42):
and pretty quickly we're seeing deer. We see a really
nice buck chasing a dough way off in the distance.
Down on that bottom there's crop feels way down there
that you can see from a farce. We see that
going on. Then we see some young bucks cruising around
in the bowl. That big northerly betting area I talked about.
We can see some bucks cruising there. Then some does
start moving in to bed around us, and it just

(46:05):
feels like, you know, anytime no something good's going to happen.
And uh, you know, I just remember, like the sun
is rising and the whole woods is like glowing and
glittering blue skies, orange and yellow kind of just rattling
leaves all around you. The sun's kind of shimmering through.
I think you guys know what I'm talking about. This

(46:25):
is like that gorgeous early November mornings where you have
the bluebirds, skies, the golden sun, the orange fall colors,
the kind of like fog that's in the air just
a little bit that kind of like makes everything just
seem like ethereal, almost like a magical scene around you.
That's what's going on. I look over my right shoulder.

(46:46):
I see antlers coming towards our way through that pinch.
Pull my binos realize that's a big buck. I tell
Ross like, big buck coming, big buck coming. I hand
him my phone so he can film. Then he says
it's him, and I realized, Holy smokes, this is the buck.
This is hamburger bun. This is the number one deer,
the one that I've had two other encounters with. And

(47:08):
he's coming right down the pipe. So I slowly get
turned around. I grab my bow. He's heading right down
this pinch that just delivers deer right in front of you.
If he follows this path and doesn't, for some reason
get turned around, he ends up walking right into like
twenty yards, but there's branches in my way here. He
stops at twenty and looks like right up at the tree,

(47:29):
and I'm thinking, oh, no, like we're done. But he
just kind of looks up in the general area. It
doesn't see anything that he isn't like, and I thank
goodness for just, you know, having a lot of cover
in that tree. I guess because he doesn't see anything
that totally bogers him. And he turns and just starts
walking across. Now he heads right to where me and
Ross walked in. Again, there's this one branch that's running

(47:50):
along the side of me, and along this one side
you just can't get a shot from the position I'm in,
so I'm waiting for him to clear this branch. He
gets to the spot where we walked in, so now
he's at our ground scent and I'm thinking like, oh no,
he's gonna hit our ground scent and this is gonna
spook him. And he hits it, sniff, sniff, sniff, and
here I think, goodness that I used I put nose
jammer on my boots, you know, not trying to do

(48:13):
a product plug here, but I do really think this
thing helps. Smells that but doesn't freak out, but then
turns and starts walking straight away. And now I'm thinking like,
oh geez, that's it. He's just gonna walk the other direction.
But he instead just took like one step away from
us or two steps away for us, and then stopped
and then turned back. So now my shot opens up.

(48:34):
He's brought a slightly quartering away. Now he takes a
step past that branch just blocking me. I'm able to
draw back. I just remember thinking to myself like take
your time, take your time, remember like centering my site
picture in the peep site and then putting that pen
right behind the shoulder. Pull him back and uh double

(48:55):
lunged him. Perfect shot. He goes running off. I watch
him go down. The celebration and ensues. And what made
it so great, I think was that you know, my
buddy was in the tree with me. We got to
just you know, relive this story and high five and
just celebrate the craziness of it all. It seems like
in so many of these rut hunts, so many trips

(49:16):
in general, at a certain point it starts to feel impossible.
It starts to feel like, oh my gosh, this will
never come together. Get you have close encounters, or maybe
you never see anything, or maybe it seems that they're
always just out of range, or something always goes wrong,
or you're not seeing a good buck or whatever it
might be. On so many of these trips, you get
to a point where it seems like it's never going
to happen, Like it never could happen. This is such

(49:39):
a hard thing to pull up. How could this ever work?
But if you stick it out and keep doing the
right things, enough and keep it fun. Often not always,
but often, eventually something flips and all of a sudden,
in a matter of seconds, it's all changed and it
finally does all fall into place. That's what happened this time.

(50:00):
Kill Hamburger Bond. We get to walk up on him.
He's an absolutely gorgeous, big old Iowa buck. It broke
off that hook unfortunately, which it would have been just
like a really unique cool buck, but one hundred and
sixty class slammer Iowa whitetail, a deer that is one
of my biggest bucks ever, but without a doubt, was

(50:23):
a part of my most fun hunt ever, because you know,
when I look at this hunt, there was a handful
of things that stand out that made this trip so special,
and much of it was not related to the fact
that I killed a big, giant buck. That was a
really nice side effect. I'm very glad that happened, but
I still think I would look at this trip and

(50:44):
still rate it as incredibly successful and fun even if
I didn't kill this deer because of everything else. I
think one thing that I did much better this time
than I've done in previous trips, especially to Iowa, is balance.
I really want to focus on balancing the experience, and
you know, at times hunting really hard, at times hunting

(51:07):
all day, at times you know, putting in the putting
in the serious hours, because right, that's the name of
the game in the rut is time in the field
is grit is grit is toughness, is just being out
there hunting hard. Right, So so you gotta do some
of them. But the same time, I also want to
not make the same mistakes that I had in the past,
which was hunting so much that you don't let yourself

(51:29):
enjoy the rest of the experience. And so that's why
I came in for some lunches, That's why I went
out for breakfast one day. That's why you know, I,
you know, hunted the spots that maybe I want to
hunt in the past. I hunted the tower blind I
hunted the box blinds. I went out and brought friends
with me. Those things probably did not help me have
a better chance of killing a deer, right, more scent

(51:51):
in the air, more chance for movement. But dang it,
we had so much fun. We had so many good laughs.
The experience was so much better because of it. This
was an opportunity to really enjoy the companionship of some
of my best hunting buddies out there in an incredible place,
chasing an incredible animal and getting to share that with

(52:11):
a friend or a family member makes it so much sweeter.
And I allowed myself to do that this time, and
I think that made a huge difference that made this
so so so enjoyable. I also had trust this time around.
I tried to not make the mistake that I've made
many times as a hunter, and that is to constantly

(52:34):
second guess your decision making, constantly debate we should have
been here or here there? Or there? Was this the
right spot? Was that the right spot? I shouldn't have
done this because I at least know I'm a very
analytical person. I'm constantly like hyper analyzing everything, and that
can help me in many cases, but it can also
hinder me because it can just lead to this constant

(52:57):
decision making stress and worry over your tad decisions like
then I put myself in the best possible place, or
should I have moved there? Should I have rattled here
and not rattled there? Whatever it might be. This time around,
I tried to make a good decision and then trust
that trust the decision, trust the spot, and then just
release yourself from worrying after that, like, like, we made

(53:17):
the decision, now let it be. It is what it is.
Now just enjoy it. So I remember a couple different times,
you know, where I start having that creeping feeling about geez,
I should have done something different, or oh gee, should
I do something different? And I would just remind myself that, hey, chill,
you're supposed to be enjoying this. Enjoy the experience. Like,
take a deep breath, close your eyes, listen to the wind,

(53:39):
Smell the fresh air, take a look at the sun
shining through the leaves, and just like, enjoy this thing.
Enjoy it. Stop stressing, just enjoy it. Trust what you did,
let it play out. Handful of times, I think that
really helped me. I think another thing is that I
released myself from expectations. As I described on pass trips.

(54:02):
When you go to Iowa or one of these other
big buck states, you sometimes go into it thinking, well,
it's Iowa, or it's Ohio or it's Kansas. You got
to shoot a giant. You see everybody's shooting these big
giant bucks on these Midwestern states, and so you start
to think that that's what you have to do too.
So because of that, you put a lot of pressure
on yourself. You pass a bunch of bucks maybe that
you normally wouldn't want to pass. You force yourself to

(54:24):
do things maybe that you wouldn't normally do because you
got to shoot that giant. And so you're so worried
about shooting that giant that again, you don't do the
fun stuff. You don't spend time with your friends, you
don't come in and do some stuff. Maybe maybe your
buddy shoots a buck, and you don't go on the
blood trail because you don't want to miss one possible
minute in the tree. I've made that mistake in the past.
I wasn't going to do it this time. So I

(54:45):
came in with modest expectations, my expectations, my goals. Like
I've said earlier, it was not to kill a one
to seventy. It was not that I had to kill
a six year old. It was not that I had
to kill the number one target deer. It was I
want to have fun. I want to, you know, experience
the full Iowa experience, and I'd like to shoot a
mature buck. And that was it. And just let you know,

(55:07):
let be whatever is going to be. And because of that,
I had so much less pressure, so much less stress
during this trip. I just really tried to enjoy it.
And yet at the end I did start having some
of that creeping worry come in. That's hard not to have,
at least a little bit. We did joke a lot
about how I was going to be the buckless non
resident forever and maybe I was just cursed, But at

(55:31):
the same time, it wasn't so serious and so worrisome
that I was actually miserable. I have been actually miserable
on some of these past hunts where I'm so obsessed
with the outcome. I just need to enjoy the process.
That's what I was doing this time around, and it
helped a ton. Ultimately. What it came down to, though,
is I think because of the fact that I came
in with those expectations, because of the fact that I

(55:53):
balanced things, because of the fact that I trusted my
decision making and didn't stress too much. And then finally
I prioritized my friends and the camaraderie and the whole
experience of being there with these good buddies. Because I
prioritized that over these other things. I just had a
damn good time. We laughed so much. We have so

(56:15):
many amazing stories to share it now, we have so
many experiences that I'm going to look back on fondly forever.
The buck almost comes in second to all that. But
I do think that I ultimately had success and killed
the deer because I was enjoying myself so much and
was not as stressed and not as worried as I
would have been past years, that I was able to

(56:36):
just let the hunt come to me. I was able
to trust in the process, and finally, when the things
actually lined up, I was in the right place, trusting
a spot where we had not seen a big buck yet,
but trusting in the spot. I was hunting with a friend.
We were having fun, and we trusted that eventually good
things will happen if we keep it fun, if we
keep doing the right things well enough, and sure enough,

(56:59):
day seven, the fates aligned and things happened, and yeah,
I killed a great deer too, which is a hell
of a bonus, tremendous trip, the perfect opposite, like the
mirror opposite of the last time I was here in Iowa.
And I think a reflection of maybe some personal growth

(57:19):
and some important lessons learned that I think helped me
not only have success, but also enjoy this hunt and
made this my best rut hunting vacation ever. So that's
how I killed this twenty twenty five Iowa Whytail. That's
how I had a terrific trip. I hope there's something
in there that you can relate to and that you

(57:41):
can learn from. I think that that on the tactical side,
you know, key things here would be trusting those pillars
of the rut, not over complicating things, Trusting in funnels
and pinch points and travel corridors, trusting in dough betting airs,
and putting in the time in those places. Don't let
all the other stuff cloud or muddy your vision and

(58:03):
your plans. If you're hunting that kind of spot with
safe wind and you put in the time in a
place where there are the kinds of deer you want
to shoot, that's all you gotta do. And then finally
make sure you're enjoying the process along the way. And
I know that's what I talked about a lot here,
but I think that has just been so so important
to this whole thing. You do that all the rest

(58:24):
falls into place. So I appreciate you joining me. Thank
you for being here, Thank you for following my journey
over all of these years. As I've had my ups
and my downs, and my highs and my lows, and
my twenty twenty one type hunts and my twenty twenty
five type punts. I hope all of it has been
helpful to you as you go through your own journey,

(58:45):
and I appreciate you being here a part of it all.
So best of luck on your upcoming hunts, and until
next time, stay Wired to Hunt,